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Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy 1st
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Forewords
Acknowledgments
Authors
Forewords
Being playful, like being thoughtful, acquiescent, or combative, is simply one of the many states of being we occupy day to day . As social creatures, we often use playfulness to interrogate our social and physical environment, to build relationships, and to establish boundaries . We may not describe this as gameplay but we engage in situations many times every day that require us to interpret rules of social and professional norms and make decisions about how we behave in order to achieve the outcomes we desire . As we get older, how we perceive and engage with play is re-contextualized and the grammar we use to describe it evolves, but essentially we negotiate the world by engaging similar strategies to those we used to test our parents’ patience or the strength of a rope swing .
Right now video games are going through those difficult teenage years, where the desire to be a grownup is engaged in a constant battle with the desire to run and jump and shout out loud . Like a teenager, the route to maturity for games cannot be negotiated using the tools or experiences available to us, we learn as we go . Over time we start to hang out with different people in different places and, while we might still feel like teenagers inside, externally our maturity is judged by the company we keep, the places we go, and the things we do .
For video games that means you will now find them in the museum or art gallery, in the classroom or medical center, and in festivals and
events being used by musicians and performers to reinterpret their performances; they are the subject of research conferences where academics discuss the way that games allow us to develop our understanding of ourselves and our interactions with ideas and actions . The maturity of a medium is not defined by the age of its audience but more by the way it enters culture . Culture, of course, is a two-way street . This book shows, for the first time, how our culture and traditions can influence our approach to designing and making games as well as being designers and makers .
I firs t came across Chris teaching a games course in a provincial art school . Having one eye open for people with a cultural studies background and an interest in video games, I immediately picked up on the influence Chris was having on the student artists and designers as it came through in the fluency and maturity of their understanding of their work . I pointed this out to a senior academic, recommending that they hold on to Chris jealously as academics with his knowledge and enthusiasm for games are hard to find. Imagine my delight to discover shortly afterward that he’d been moved to another department…Meanwhile in Dundee, a small games studio was building a reputation for excellence, reliability, and productivity, building small casual games for digital TV set-top boxes . Denki would develop over 150 games for that platform and develop a design process that was as close to anything I’d seen to a reliable and reproducible approach to designing a stream of high-quality products .
The “Denki Way,” as it became known, was developed by the inspired and mercurial Gary Penn and the insightful and forensic Colin Anderson . The studio practices an all-encompassing approach to design and development that values craft and quality with a player-centered approach to all aspects of planning, design, and production . When the opportunity arose for a study of design practices in the games industry, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council here at Abertay University, Denki and Chris seemed like an irresistible match .
In the eye of the storm at Denki sat Sean Taylor, producer and the man tasked with implementing the “Denki Way” and ideally placed to guide Chris through the twist and turns of the process; how it had developed from principle to practice and what it meant for day-to-day life in the studio . Collaboration turned to friendship through a shared passion for pop culture, fashion, and music . What started as research soon became a crusade to improve design practice in the games industry, learning from previous experiences in other media, particularly in advertising and design agencies . Their approach borrows the ecosystem of the music industry and the emerging “authenticity culture” in catering and hospitality; the soft politics of the hipster
movement influenced their thinking. Conceived over craft beer and artisan pretzels, this book is the joyful issue of their union .
Punk Playthings is overtly political . It challenges game makers to line up alongside rebellious visionaries from Malcolm McLaren to Quentin Tarantino; to recognize that they are part of a disruptive tradition that casts a skeptical eye to its past and a jealous eye to its future . In these pages, commercial success is neither motivation nor shameful desire but a consequence of authenticity . Here, game making is a response to the urge to engage with others and, in its authentic state, a means by which to critique contemporary society, its values and its institutions . Engagement, for Chris and Sean, is not a transaction—not downloads or in app purchases—but an ethos that begins in the studio (or even at the bar), expressed in shared cultural values They emphasize the need for an agreed vision (manifesto) and a commitment to your craft that is matched by a commitment to your players, a cultural appetite that informs every aspect of production and an openness to the influence of the past on the potential of the future .
This book brings to mind Flannery O’Connor’s answer to a question about why she writes . In her response, “I write to discover what I know,” the author captures the fundamental condition of creative production . She points out that grand visions quickly turn to philosophy but that the creative impetus begins in the individual experience; it is the personal made public and the intimate made explicit . In speaking of what we know, we preserve authenticity and offer up an invitation to players to enter into the confidence of the game.
As the introduction says, this book is not for everyone . Game makers, designers and developers are an increasingly diverse group . Over my 15 years of practicing teaching and researching in games, I have worked with at least three games industries and visited enormous games factories, micro-studios, and sole traders . I have witnessed a technology industry become a creative industry, become a cultural industry and be all of these at once. The one thing I find everywhere I go is a spirit of adventure, a desire to look over the horizon to bring back what they find. This book is written in that spirit and if you’re a fellow traveler, this book might just be for you .
Gregor White Professor of Applied Creativity Head of School of Design and Informatics and the
UK Centre for Excellence in Computer Games Education at Abertay University
I was pleasantly surprised when Sean told me that he and Chris would be writing a book inspired by Chris’ time studying Denki’s development methods . I’ve always intended to share more about the lessons Denki has learned as independent game developers, but never quite got around to it for various reasons . The idea of having someone else start the ball rolling was more than welcome . However, I was a little concerned when Sean asked me to write a foreword for the fruits of their labor: Punk Playthings . That’s because it’s hard to imagine anyone less “punk” than me—a balding, middle-aged geek who grew up doing what I was told, keeping away from those unruly characters who might lead me astray and finding solace in that quintessential antithesis of punk rock music—prog rock
That said, I’ve always had a healthy respect for mavericks—those people I saw doing their own thing because they inherently knew it was right, even when everyone around them was telling them otherwise . Fortunately, upon joining DMA Design in 1993, I had the opportunity to work with an entire company of mavericks early in my career and that experience lit in me a desire to carry the torch forward after DMA abandoned its pioneering roots and jumped aboard the Grand Theft Auto gravy train at the end of 1999 . I never really considered it this way at the time—but with this benefit of hindsight and the perspective I’ve gained from this book you’re about to read—I guess you could say that leaving the safe harbor of DMA to start Denki was … a little bit punk?
Having now read Punk Playthings, I certainly recognize a few hallmarks I wouldn’t have beforehand . Denki was born of the kind of frustration and rebellion this book champions—frustration at the dysfunctional development methods our industry considers “normal”—and rebellion at the widely held belief that the creative process of making games is somehow sacred: a dark art, full of superstition and ritual, complete with its high-priests who claim a deeper understanding and insight . As far as I’ve been able to tell from my own experiences, all those approaches ever do are create convenient shadows that charlatans can hide in after making poor decisions so as never to be held to account for their outcomes, or used to frighten developers into compliance . I wanted Denki to kick the doors open, to throw back the curtains, let in some light and show everyone that game development wasn’t anything to be worshiped or revered without question but rather a wonderful new art-form to be explored, studied, and challenged by a digital generation of artisans in just the sorts of ways Punk Playthings encourages So I guess you might say that was a little bit punk too?
When I launched Denki with my co-conspirators in 2000, we rejected commercialism as our prime motivator, unlike the majority of our games industry peers at the time . Not in the sort of naive, idealistic way that Punk Playthings wisely warns young game creators away
from, but by placing money in its rightful place as a key resource to be respected rather than a principal guiding aim to be chased at any cost . Of course, everyone says they’re not motivated by the money, but we only really find out whether we are or not when it’s on the table right in front of us . That’s why one of my proudest moments remains Friday March 10, 2000, when I and my fellow Denki founders looked a £1.6 Million offer to buy the company outright straight in the eye and said, “no thanks—our independence matters more to us .” I guess that was pretty punk.
The independence we bought ourselves that day enabled us to build Denki entirely without compromise and grow it into a sort of creative laboratory for game development, crystallizing our culture slowly around our core principles without any impurities . We were able to find people along the way who shared our goal of making game development more transparent and effective and who wanted to build games with a focus on the substance rather than the surface . Every time we did make money, we didn’t spend it on flashier offices—as anyone who has ever visited Denki HQ will attest—or fast cars or any of the other vanity traps young game developers often fall into . Ins tead, each time we amassed the kind of money that might have bought us bigger houses or faster cars, we spent it on funding more research in the Denki games laboratory, exploring original concepts that inspired us or refining the techniques that would help us master the craft of game making . I guess that was pretty punk .
The development method we arrived at—which we rather unimaginatively refer to as “The Denki Way”—certainly helps us make games more effectively, but it was never intended to be prescriptive; it was intended to be provocative . Sure, no one blinks at the mention of video games and digital toys in the same sentence today, but back in 2000 when Denki shunned the “games company” descriptor and announced itself as “A Digital Toy Company,” the suggestion of computer games as digital toys was more likely to start a fight than inspire thoughtful discussion . In some ways, we were wearing the I Hate Pink Floyd t-shirts of our day. So, you know, maybe that was properly punk too.
Oh yeah—and now I come to think of it—Denki never really had a commercial hit either . What could possibly be more punk than that, right?
I’ve been lucky enough to meet and work with some truly inspirational mavericks over the years and the authors of this book certainly fall into that category . Sean is a kindred spirit who embodies the ideals Denki was founded on better than I do . He’s held us all accountable to those ideals in practice and he continually challenges their underlying assumptions without deference in order to make them better . Chris is
his perfect counterpart—every bit as curious, insightful and fearlessly questioning as Sean, but forged in the academy rather than tempered in the furnaces of creative factories . Bet ween them, they have a formidable insight and perspective on the most pressing issues today’s game makers will need to overcome if they want to work in play for the long term . And I ’m really pleased to see so many of those insights successfully captured and shared within the pages that follow .
It’s been something of a bittersweet experience reading through the wisdom Sean and Chris have carefully distilled into Punk Playthings . Par t of me is deeply jealous that I didn’t have this book when I was starting my career in game development 25 years ago . There are lessons on almost every page that are worth their weight in gold— lessons that took me months—sometimes years—to learn There are innovative approaches to game development in here that I literally bankrolled and wasted tens, or maybe hundreds, of thousands of pounds on before discovering their limitations—all expertly deconstructed and exposed for the misguided thinking they always were, so that no one else has to waste their time or money going down those dead ends again . I seriously wish I could go back and hand my younger self a copy of this book when I was starting Denki .
Then again, maybe it’s just as well this stuff wasn’t in circulation back then because after reading this book I’ve realized I’m so punk I’d probably have rebelled against it all anyway . Now I’m just left wondering what pisses off today’s new generation of game makers the most? What aspects of “the games industry” are they going to rebel against? By the time they’ve finished reading Punk Playthings, they’ll have the perspective and manifesto to marshall themselves to change it .
I sincerely hope that Punk Playthings hands them the match they need to light their anger into a healthy, two-fingered salute to conventional wisdom .
Kick out the jams motherfuckers .
Colin Anderson CEO Denki Dundee, Scotland
Acknowledgments
Chris says
Thanks to Professor Gregor White for glimpsing a glimmer of potential many years ago then consistently helping me realize it . To Colin Anderson and Gary Penn for their friendship, openness, and generosity . And to my dad for putting Pong in his seaside amusement arcade 40 or so years ago—this is your fault .
Respect to my fellow gunslinger, Sean, for much the same things he’s kindly written about me . Plus his razor-sharp insight into making games and careful nurturing of my now deep appreciation of nocturnal Scottish culture . ¡Larga vida la conspiración!
Thanks to friends at the University of Abertay, Dundee—Dr Iain Donald and Dr Dayna Galloway in particular—and some of the wonderful students I’ve taught over the years (hello, Rosie!) .
Most importantly, I really could not have written this book without the love and support of my wife and best friend, Marie-Claire . This book is for you .
Sean says
I’d like to thank Gary Penn for helping me to think differently about the design of game design and Colin Anderson for giving me the impetus to articulate it . I’d also like to thank my co-conspirator, Chris, for his endless enthusiasm, inspiring provocations and ever-insightful criticisms
Finally, this book is dedicated to my wife, Zoe This book would not have been possible without her love and support . Thank you .
We both say
Chris and Sean would like to thank Louie Isaaman-Jones for his sterling work making this book look unique . When he’s not selecting music, crafting cocktails, or tending to urban woodland, Louie does distinctive design for some of London’s most maverick nights, record labels, agencies, and companies . If you want him to make something of yours look better, say hello:
Email: info@louieij com
Web: http://www louieij com/
Instagram: https://www instagram com/louieij
Authors
Dr Chris Lowthorpe is an award-winning game educator and playful provocateur . He earned his doctorate from the University of Abertay, Dundee—currently Europe’s top game school—where he also won the 2014 Innovation in Teaching Award . Chris has taught and mentored some of the brightest talents in UK games and provided game education, development, and entrepreneurship consultancy to academic, cultural, and commercial organizations .
An unreconstructed East Anglian, Chris is a lifelong Pong fanatic, trained chef, amateur cocktail crafter, ex-London tour guide, socialistturned-pragmatist, retired DJ and Acid House veteran . Somehow, all this is connected. He lives in the middle of a Suffolk field with his wife, Marie-Claire, extensive record collection, trusty Jeep, and the occasional pheasant .
Sean Taylor is an award-winning game producer and playful provocateur. In 1996, Sean dropped out of college to join the organized chaos of DMA Design—midway through the production of the original Grand Theft Auto —and has been making games ever since . For 10 years, Sean was the producer at Denki—Dundee’s digital toy
factory—where he helped design, develop, and produce hundreds of games across web, mobile, television, console, and social—most notably, the BAFTA-winning Quarrel . He has worked on some of the world’s largest and smallest game projects—creating a lot of value and a lot more mistakes along the way .
Made in Scotland and currently residing in Dubai, Sean helps game makers around the world do the things that they do better so they can do better things .
Web: https://www .play haus .online
Twitter: https://twitter .com/k wangchow
Instagram: https://www inst agram com/ kwangchow/
1,2,3,4...
“Hello Peter, Hello Paul, Saints and sinners, welcome all, Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello!”
Introduction
The Beloved Hello (1990)
Is It Me You’re Looking For?
Before we get started, we would like to thank you for buying this book (muchas gracias), borrowing it (cheers), or possibly stealing it (bloody cheapskate) . We also want to discuss expectations . If you’re reading this in the hope of discovering a silver bullet for entrepreneurial game making success—forget it . That’s the next book . If you wanted a prescriptive how-to handbook for the step-by-step creation of compelling playful experiences—sorry, no dice . Don ’t worry . There are plenty of people out there who will gladly nickel and dime you with snake oil promises for both the above . But if you’re looking for a book to provoke, challenge, and sometimes frustrate you—while maybe forcing the odd nod of recognition or occasional outburst of emphatic agreement—you could be in luck .
This book is a compass, not a map . It is b oth probe and provocation, not a comfortable confirmation of game making biases and orthodoxies . Yo u might love it and hate it at the same time . Th at’s fine. All we ask is you keep an open mind. Do that and who knows what might happen? This book is not for everyone . But i t might just be for you .
Who’s Better, Who’s Best?
“ We tried and we failed
And we tried and we failed
Oh, we tried and we failed
We tried and we failed
And we tried …
Cash on the nail ... it’s just a fairytale!”
The Smiths with Sandie Shaw Jeane (1984)
This is a book born out of failure . Prim arily, the failure to settle an argument . In Ja nuary 2012, Denki—the independent game studio in Dundee, Scotland, where Sean worked—launched Quarrel for the Xbox . A str ategy word game best described as Scrabble × Risk × Countdown, Quarrel was initially published on the App Store in August the previous year . The g ame quickly received critical acclaim, culminating in the BAFTA Scotland Best Game Award for 2011 . Bu t the development story of Quarrel was not a happy one .
Denk i first envisaged Quarrel in 2008, finishing a version for Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) two years later . And t his is where the trouble began . Fol lowing prevailing industry orthodoxy, the studio started shopping Quarrel around to publishers . The ga me acquisition teams loved it but once they passed the game up the decision tree, problems started. The executives in finance and marketing depa rtments—what Denki CEO Colin Anderson terms “the bit more commonly known as The Industry”—were not interested (2012) . The pu blishers gave many reasons for rejecting Quarrel but one signal persisted through the noise: gamers don’t buy word games . Ande rson didn’t agree . He be lieved “gamers know a good game when they see one and will happily invest in it” (Anderson 2012). Denki pressed on . Wh en it published the iOS version a year later, critical reaction and the winning of a BAFTA supplied signals Anderson could be right . So on the day of Quarrel ’s XBLA launch, in his usual engaging and candid style Anderson penned an article
for Gamasutra describing what had occurred and provocatively asking: who was right, the game industry or Quarrel ?
The answer was neither . Qua rrel was not the commercial success Denki hoped for. The certification process and legal wrangling necessary for publishing on XBLA had become “excruciating” for independent developers (Carmel 2011) . Denki proved no exception . Wor se, the company had chosen the wrong publisher for the game . But Quarrel had to be released if it was going to recoup its development costs . Fin ally, the game emerged, but only at great commercial, cultural, and personal cost to the company . Des pite all its best intentions, it transpired that Denki had sold Quarrel out to the wrong people
But Denki’s failures do not mean the industry was right . What the story of Quarrel exposed were the limits of industry orthodoxy . The old ways of thinking, making, and selling were no longer working in a newly disrupted landscape . A game that had been a notable critical success, that connected and resonated with players during open playtesting and following its App Store launch, had somehow managed to sink without trace . For Denki, Quarrel was proof, traditional industry methods were now useless at selling quirky games or esoteric experiences . The orthodoxy was based on notions of the mass, of bloc demographics, and of push advertising . Ins tead of attracting patronage directly from the like-minded, dogma demanded identikit games that conformed to established genres . These simply cannibalized concepts and mechanics from other successful games in an effort to appeal to the same audience, conveniently identified by proxies such as focus groups and personas . The resulting products were then neatly packaged and put on the “supermarket shelf .” Games were beginning to eat themselves .
Turning Disruption into Money
Releasing Quarrel was futile yet valuable . The g ame failed commercially but it confirmed what Denki had suspected: the industry playbook hadn’t changed but the playing field and rules of the game had . Rad ically . Aft er learning this, Denki decided it needed to experiment with new approaches for making and selling games . It wou ld need to adapt better and faster if it was going to negotiate the uncertainties of a disrupted marketplace and survive . Thi s need was the provocation that led to a new project: Denki Skunk Works .
Skun k Works was a highly autonomous team working on experimental projects relatively unhindered by bureaucracy . Sean w as
instigator and leader of the project, Chris observed it for his doctoral research . The t eam sought to explore new thinking and perspectives by developing experimental products that provided heuristic learning . Sk unk Works would learn quickly and fail fast by conducting insurgencies into the new and supposedly democratized marketplace generated by digital distribution . It was hoped this learning would eventually help Denki circumvent outmoded industry bullshit and achieve commercial success making its own games .
Denki already knew self-publishing presented as many challenges as opportunities . It brought increased uncertainty, a saturated marketplace, and the need for a new mindset and set of competencies . It was difficult to get a game discovered by customers or to persuade those that discovered it to make a purchase . In its impetuous idealism, the valorization of self-publishing by the indie sector tended to gloss over these challenges—it still does—but Denki had been playing the game too long to get fooled . The company had begun exploring approaches designed to help overcome these new challenges, starting with Steve Blank’s Customer Development approach then progressing to Lean Startup principles advocated by Eric Ries and Ash Maurya . But A nderson soon realized adopting Lean Startup throughout Denki would be too radical, risky, and slow . Ins tead, the proposed Skunk Works would do it . So this team began a series of experiments to implement Lean Startup, build adaptive and entrepreneurial capacity, recognize and overcome the challenges of self-publishing, and most of all, to learn. One of the first things Skunk Works learned was that while Lean Startup had some useful ideas and approaches for game development, it was too clinical for creating compelling playful experiences . Wor se, the team discovered that building adaptive capacity, encouraging entrepreneurship, and developing a heuristic mindset take time and therefore money . Unfortunately, both were running out for Denki .
Skunk Works came to an end due to lack of resources . By usual business metrics, it had been a failure . The project had not delivered commercial success from its experimental game, Par Tribus, and the only meaningful revenue now coming into Denki was from work for hire . The company had a proven repertoire for efficient high-quality making, so it seemed obvious its best chance for short-term sustainability lay in that direction Denki gave up trying to create and sell original games for the foreseeable future Ins tead, it went back to making games for other organizations . End of story .
Well, not quite . Because in many ways, Skunk Works was a success . It delivered what it was supposed to: valuable heuristic learning . Denki learned through failure that Lean Startup was not a silver
bullet for game making . It also learned that the company was not—at that time—well equipped to sell its own games on the open market . And it learned all this fast enough to change direction and return to client work . As a result, Denki not only saved itself but has quietly prospered in the past few years . More personally, it made us realize that a heuristic mindset, nimble adaptability, entrepreneurship, and intrapreneurship are now crucial competencies for game makers . These are no longer luxuries; they are necessities . But this learning— complimented by secondhand learning from the failure of others—also led us to think there had to be other ways to skin the game making cat. There had to be different approaches beyond the well-trodden but increasingly deteriorating AAA or indie pathways Some new roads less traveled We st arted discussing and exploring hundreds of examples that imparted more learning and it is a curated collection of these that appear in this book . Many come from the world of games but many do not . All helped us develop a set of first principles that form the foundation for our approach to making games in the early 21st century .
Career Opportunities
“Anger is an energy!”
Public Image Limited Rise (1986)
Another catalyst for this book was the serial tendency of game startups in our local ecosystem to fail after a year or so . Man y had been “incubated” by much-vaunted programs funded by public money, others by a national broadcaster . Mos t featured students we had previously taught or mentored, who we knew were extremely talented and had been educated on perhaps the best university game program in Europe . It wa s obvious something was seriously wrong when so much creative talent was being wasted . We i nvestigated further and began to identify why this was happening: the funding of snowflake ideas instead of sustainable teams, pressure to incorporate not speculate, monocultural and orthodoxical ment orship, exhortations to endlessly make that treated selling as an afterthought or dirty word, self-limiting “indie” cultures and identities, and those holding the purse strings often being more interested in “conserving the institution” than the future of talented young people . It made us sad and angry to see all this entrepreneurial spirit wasted and enthusiasm crushed . And i t is this anger that detonated this book and underpins its provocative approach. We really care about this shit .
Walls Come Tumbling Down
“Creativity is just connecting things … [Creative people] connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things ... the broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”
Steve Jobs interviewed by Gary Wolf in Wired (1996)
This book is a mosaic . It adopts a contextual and inductive approach where exemplars act as tesserae assembled to make up a unified whole . Or at least, that’s the plan . We display little respect for boundaries between mediums, industries, sectors, specialisms, or disciplines . We want this book to function as a trading space for ideas and learning sourced from across domains and cultures We agree with Steve Jobs—the broader your cultural inputs, the better your creative outputs . Monocultures are simply systems devoted to reducing the variation that helps ecosystems evolve (Turner 2008, p .45) . A monocultural mindset has no place in creative or artistic ecosystems, serving only to increase homogeneity and diminish originality . Creativity scholar Keith Sawyer argues “you can’t create in a vacuum” (2006, loc . 3414) . We agree . For S awyer, creativity is a sociocultural, interactional, collaborative phenomenon—contextually dependent on wider culture and society. And creating games is no different. Even though it sometimes seems like its own island, as a creative endeavor game making is really part of a vast, connected archipelago . A tessera in the cultural mosaic, to extend the metaphor . And when everything is connected, you can learn from anywhere . All you have to do is embrace knowledge-gathering, expand your cultural capital, think laterally, and make interesting new connections . Poach, plunder, and pilfer good ideas . Appropriate everything worth taking and reimagine it as something fresh .
You w ill find each essay here functions as a stand-alone piece but is, of course, connected to everything else . This means you don’t have to read this book in sequential order if you don’t want . You will also notice essays and examples raise points and themes that repeat and resonate throughout this book . Sometimes we make these explicit, sometimes they remain implicit . There are also shifts in authority, tone, and perspective . We make no apologies for this . We’re exploring a complicated, fluid, and uncertain landscape where there are no easy answers . This book constitutes the process of our thinking rather than a completed product of discovery . We employ examples and case studies as probes and provocations, as means of insight to enable pattern recognition, rather than to deliver the fleeting chimera
of objective truth . Like Marshall McLuhan, we see ourselves as safecrackers who don’t know what’s inside . We just sit down and start to work. We listen, test, accept, and discard. We try out different sequences until the tumblers fall and (hopefully) the doors spring open (Playboy 1969). We have no fixed perspective. And we are happy to revise anything we say that later proves to be nonsense or doesn’t provide deeper understanding . The nearest we come to advocating anything is our manifesto, a set of first principles that both informed and emerged from the iterative process of writing this book . Outside of those, we pretty much leave you to make your own connections and draw your own conclusions. We’ve got total confidence in your level of intelligence After all, you’re reading this book Plus , it gives you something to do Who s aid games have the monopoly on interactivity?
Rip It Up and Start Again
Although this book begins with failure, it is not about failure . It is about taking failure and learning from it, then using that learning to develop alternative approaches . This book is about learning from other people, from other cultures, domains, and sectors, from the distant or recent past. But it is definitely not about following prescriptive rules and dogma or getting stuck in nostalgic quicksand . The past is for building on, not living in . This book is about encouraging a truly independent mindset and approach for creating expressive playful experiences that resonate through culture . It is about embracing chaos, flipping the bird to orthodoxy, making new and unusual connections and, of course, doing it yourself . For this is the true essence of punk— not mohawk haircuts or ripped t-shirts—and the reason this book is called Punk Playthings .
Thick as Thieves
Finally, the thinking that appears on these pages is the product of two minds . It is the result of a conspiracy . And that conspiracy grew from serendipity, as so many creative things do . A few weeks after Chris began research at Denki, he was dispatched to a conference in Glasgow . So was Sean . Neither of us knew the other was attending, as we had only exchanged pleasantries at this point By chance, we found ourselves attending the same talk and sat together Afterward, we discussed the content and discovered we had reached roughly the same conclusions . So, in the absence of anything more interesting on the agenda, we withdrew to one of Glasgow’s fine hostelries to discuss things further . And so the journey began .
In the five years since, we have continued these conspiratorial conversations . Incessantly . During visits to Dundee’s best bars and pubs, our respective homes, London restaurants, workspaces, and most recently—due to geographical distance—on Slack . During this time we kept working our day jobs, adapted our thinking, and iterated our principles. The book you’re reading is a different proposition to the book we began . And that’s as it should be . Writing is thinking—as is any creative act . But at some point, you just have to stop . At some point, you have to expose your conspiracy and invite others in—if only to make it real . And so, dear reader, here is your invitation .
Chapter 1
The Road Less Traveled
Abstract
There are exceptional games but there is nothing exceptional about games . As a medium, it is no better or worse than any other .
This chapter explores creative mavericks who rejected the conventional wisdom and subverted the orthodoxical practices of their chosen mediums and domains . It argues that game makers themselves must move beyond the ghetto of the gamer—and the nostalgic clichés of traditional game development—to become genuinely independent in their thoughts, intentions and actions . To invent the future, games must take the road less traveled .
No Gods , No Masters
“A man with no enemies is a man with no character.”
Paul Newman (quoted in Verlhac and Dherbier 2006)
“Imagination is its own form of courage.”
Francis J Underwood House of Cards (2015)
Eclectic Skeptics
We worry too much about what people think of us . And we accept too much of what we’re told . Now, this might sound rich coming from a book constantly telling you stuff. But that’s not what this book is about . What we’re doing is sharing provocations that will hopefully make you stop and think . What you do then, that’s totally up to you . Nobody is infallible; no one has a monopoly on truth, despite what snake oil sellers would have you believe . And that’s always worth remembering . Be an eclectic skeptic . Form your own character . Accept no gods, no masters . Look around, process and evaluate your context, assimilate information, then find new perspectives and imagine new realities . Leave the Kool-Aid on the shelf and resist restrictive silos . We don’t follow prescriptive rule books—why should you?
More than a Woman
“Men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I’m one of the best painters.”
Georgia O’Keeffe (quoted in Chadwick 1990)
Consider Georgia O’Keeffe. Today regarded as one of the great artists of the last century, O’Keefe spent much of her life resisting categorization. She lived uncompromisingly on her own terms and her work was equally resolute . In th e 1920s she started to paint plants and flowers—nothing new you might think—but O’Keeffe had a different perspective. Instead of a traditional still-life viewpoint, she decided to paint flora as if viewed through a magnifying glass—up close and extremely personal . Work s such as Black Iris garnered critical and public attention,
helping establish O’Keeffe as one of America’s most innovative modernists (Messinger 2004) . Th ese paintings also led to critics making myriad associations with the female body, due mainly to the popularity of Sigmund Freud’s ideas at the time . Th roughout the 1920s, her work was continually described in Freudian terms, labelled as “feminine” concerning perspective and method of expression . O’Keefe hated this . She viewed these interpretations as lazy ideological constructions that reinforced ideas of sexual difference, leading to more social and cultural segregation between genders (Chadwick 1990) . In th is construction, women painters were “feminine,” “emotional,” and “elementary,” subconsciously obsessed with their bodies and close to the earth, whereas men were “masculine,” “rational,” and “intellectual ” O’Keeffe never apologized for her gender—often exploring and celebrating her womanhood—but she believed such thinking only continued to marginalize female artists and reinforce patriarchy. It kept her firmly in the category of “great woman artist” but excluded her from being a “great artist . ”
In 1929, O’Keeffe started to visit New Mexico and became enchanted by the landscape and iconography of the desert there . Again, she adopted a new perspective, juxtaposing skeletal objects with desert landscape imagery, playing with size and scale . These works were provocative and unsettling, surreal and often masculine in form, far from the perceived femininity of her earlier work . For the rest of her life she would continue to shift perspectives in her paintings, moving close-up and abstracting her favorite landscapes, reimagining clouds from above through an airplane window. O’Keeffe would live in the brutal, beautiful desert lampooning men who talked about the “Great American Adventure” but had “never crossed the Hudson” (Imagine 2016) . She was an outsider prickly as a local cactus who ploughed her own idiosyncratic furrow. Fellow outsider Joan Didion argued O’Keeffe was “equipped early with an immutable sense of who she was and a fairly clear understanding she would be required to prove it” (1979, p .129) . And this she did by remaining fluid, shifting perspectives by zooming in and out, resisting categorization and in the process, disrupting the patriarchal art world .
Today there are major retrospectives of O’Keeffe’s work in the most prestigious museums and galleries in the world . Her resolutely maverick life is the subject of biographies and documentaries. Georgia O’Keeffe is now described simply as “a pioneer of 20th-century art” (Tate 2016) or “American Painter” (Encyclopedia Britannica 2016); the words “female” or “woman” conspicuous by their increasing absence . Her continued resistance to being
sidelined and categorized, her insistence on being judged solely on her work rather than her gender, finally paid off. Today Georgia O’Keeffe is simply one of the best painters.
An Englishman in New York
“We Sell—or else!”
David Ogilvy Confessions of an Advertising Man (2013)
With David Ogilvy it’s often hard to separate the myth from the man; he was equally at home selling himself as he was selling his clients’ products . But that’s part of what makes him so fascinating . Born in England of Scots and Irish extraction, Ogilvy won a scholarship to Oxford to read history . By his own admission he “screwed up” his university education, leaving in 1931 to work as an apprentice chef in Paris (Tungate 2007) . A year or so later, he took a job peddling Aga cooking stoves to French chefs in London restaurants . During this time as a door-to-door salesman, Ogilvy discovered and refined his talent for selling and closing a deal, becoming so successful his boss asked him to write a manual for the other salesmen . Dec ades later, this book was still being praised by Fortune magazine as an exemplar for sales manuals, at the time it led Ogilvy to his first job in advertising (Tungate 2007). But the lessons he learned on the streets of London never left him, granting Ogilvy a unique perspective that led him to become perhaps the most quoted and revered “ad man” ever . The tough streets were a world away from the glamour of advertising but closer to the customer . And it was here Ogilvy heuristically and memorably, realized that “the customer isn’t a moron, she is your wife” (2013, p .124) . Long before advertisers started to think of people as individuals or even personas—these were the days of the masses “understood” by distant proxy—Ogilvy beat them to the punch by actually getting out and meeting people . Fancy that . He learned and never forgot that customers were more than abstractions or catch-all demographics—they were people too .
Ogil vy always maintained advertising was simply a sophisticated form of selling . No more, no less . Immersing himself in the industry during his early career, he spent time learning from New York’s most successful ad men . But Ogilvy was a natural skeptic . He evaluated learning and information, abandoning what didn’t resonate with him and adopting and synthesizing what did—before adding
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Katalog der Ausstellung österreichischer Kunstgewerbe. 1910/1911. 1910. (Österr. Museum.)
Katalog der Ausstellung österreichischer Kunstgewerbe. 1911/1912. 1911. (Österr. Museum.)
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